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Network Biology, 2014, 4(1): 21-30
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Article

Local and global control of ecological and biological networks

Alessandro Ferrarini
Department of Evolutionary and Functional Biology, University of Parma, Via G. Saragat 4, I-43100 Parma, Italy

Received 8 November 2013;Accepted 12 December 2013;Published online 1 March 2014
IAEES

Abstract
Recently, I introduced a methodological framework so that ecological and biological networks can be controlled both from inside and outside by coupling network dynamics and evolutionary modelling. The endogenous control requires the network to be optimized at the beginning of its dynamics (by acting upon nodes, edges or both) so that it will then go inertially to the desired state. Instead, the exogenous control requires that exogenous controllers act upon the network at each time step. By the way, all my previous works dealt with the goal of the global optimization of ecological and biological networks, i.e. how to drive them to a desired final state. Here I face another pivotal question: how can we locally (step-by-step) drive ecological and biological networks, so that also intermediate steps (not only the final state) are under our strict control? The ratio behind this question is that intermediate dynamics could potentially go below or above critical ecological-biological thresholds, hence invalidating the final global control. To this purpose, I introduce here a modelling solution to the complete control of ecological and biological networks that couples local and global control.

Keywords edges control;genetic algorithms;global dynamics;local dynamics;network control;nodes control.

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